To an Angel · 7

Yes; Faust fancied he was a poet no longer. Just as mystics have hours in which the coldness they perceive induces them to doubt their own faith, artists falter at given moments, believing themselves impotent, paralysed, dead. Recluse in his study, Faust summoned the muse; but in vain the lamp shone, the hearth burned, the hyacinths and violets exhaled their fragrance, the silk of the curtains rustled: the unfaithful one did not keep the tryst, and Faust, with his feverish brow resting upon the palm of his hand—an attitude familiar to all who have wrestled alone with the rebellious angel—felt not a drop flow from the delicious spring: he saw only black rocks, barren sand-wastes scorched by the desert sun.

In those moments of agony, his conscience accused him, telling him that the decline of the artist proceeded from the indifference of the man; that poetry comes not to wildernesses, but to oases, and that if he could not love again, neither could he yoke verses again—like one who hitches pairs of white hinds to the same golden chariot.—The women who had mocked and abandoned him were, no doubt, unworthy of his love; but neither had he—Faust, the poet, the dreamer, the bird—taken the trouble to wish to inspire it, still less to feel it. The desert was not the soul of another, it was his own soul; let him who offers only burning plains and barren crags not wonder that the weary traveller does not sit down to rest, nor wish to sleep a long and sweet siesta, such as is slept beneath the shade of green palms beside the cool well...

Faust was walking one September afternoon, on foot and aimlessly, along one of the lonely boulevards of Madrid, and at the edge of a vacant lot fenced with planks he discerned groups of people examining with signs of the liveliest interest something fallen upon the ground. Heads were bending, and from the circle arose exclamations of pity and wonder. Faust was about to pass without paying heed; but an indefinable sensation of cruel curiosity urged him into the throng. He reflected that reality is the mother of poetry, and that sometimes from the most vulgar incident the generating spark leaps forth. Not without some effort did he manage to make his way through, and once in the front rank, he was able to see what caused the astonishment of that humble crowd.

Upon the sparse, miserable grass that with difficulty sprang from the clayey soil, lay stretched a young woman of surprising beauty. The pallor of death, and that sort of mysterious dignity and calm which it imprints upon features, made her resemble a most perfect marble bust, and the slight glazing of her Moorish eyes did not diminish their sweetness. Her loose hair encircled her face like a cushion of dull velvet, and her half-parted mouth revealed her pearly teeth between her pale and pure lips. No wound was discernible upon the young woman’s body, and her garments preserved decent composure. She was lying on her side. A woolen sash bound her waist to that of an ugly and coarse young fellow, also dead, from a bullet wound which, entering through the ear, had shattered the skull. No doubt in the death-agony of the two lovers the sash had loosened, for the woman appeared turned somewhat to the right, and the youth to the left, as though turning away from his companion in death.

With a mixture of pity and anger, the masons, the washerwomen, and the police constables discussed the tragic event.—It was a case of a double suicide, concerted beforehand, and even announced by the brute of a lad in a tavern the previous night.—The opposition of her parents, his evil habits, and his having been drafted as a soldier, were the cause. She could not resign herself to separation: she herself, the passionate woman, had thrown out the terrible idea, welcomed with stupid relish by the jealous and ferocious man: to die, to depart embraced wherever God should appoint; never to be parted again; let it vex whom it might, to wed in the coffin... Without delay he had acquired the revolver, and after a morning spent together lunching at a tavern, the two lovers had retired to the secluded vacant lot, where, first winding the lad’s sash around both waists, she had offered with sublime confidence her left breast, without that smile she still preserved fixed upon her mouth vanishing even upon feeling the barrel of the weapon over her heart—that smile displaying her pearly teeth between her pale and pure lips!

At night, upon retiring home, Faust felt a singular fever which he recognized beforehand, for he was wont to experience it whenever his being was renewed with emotions never felt before. Such nervous excitement marked, like the hand of a clock, the successive stages of his moral life. Extreme joy, vehement and inconsolable grief were equally heralded for Faust by a rare restlessness, a disquietude of the heart, which now quickens its beats, now quiets down and swoons almost to syncope. He counted the nocturnal hours sleepless in bed: he could not banish from his thoughts the image of the dead girl; and while he saw once more the vacant lot, the ring of curious onlookers, the tragic group of the lovers setting out embraced upon the journey without return, a confused seething of rhymes, an emerging of incomplete stanzas, an oceanic rolling of sonorous verses ascended from his throbbing heart to his brain, and descended afterwards, like an impetuous torrent, to his hand already impatient to grasp the pen...

The strangest thing of all was that Faust, with his fancy, amended the draft of blind Destiny. The beautiful girl who had received the bullet in her left breast was not in love with the barbarous, plebeian drunkard, the coarse profligate who rested beside her, and who bound her with the sash before dealing her death. No: the favoured lover of that woman who knew how to love and die; he who before slaying her had inhaled the breath of her virgin mouth, was Faust, the poet; Faust, who at last had found his ideal, and who upon finding it preferred to leave the earth, sealing with the seal of the irreparable so magnificent a passion.

Who doubts that only Faust, capable of understanding the value of that sublime deed, deserved to have inspired it? Correcting the ineptitude of facts, despising the vain appearance of reality, Faust gathered for himself the ardent blossom of love, the flower of blood sown in the wasteland of the Madrid boulevard. He was the companion of that dead girl who smiled; he it was who had pressed the revolver against the fearless breast of the heroine, not only calm before death, but in love with the death that unites eternally, without possible separation, those who loved each other to delirium... And the suggestion was so powerful that Faust threw off the bedclothes, struck a light, and began to cover paper with ink...

Such was the origin of the poem Together, Faust’s highest title to glory, that which will consecrate his name before posterity, because Together is (criticism affirms it) a marvel of genuine feeling, and one understands that it was written with the living tears of the poet, that it corresponds to unfeigned sorrows and joys—to something that is not invented, because it cannot be invented.

Champagne

When the bottle with its gilded neck was uncorked, the eyes of Raimundo Valdés’s momentary companion grew dark, and that shadow of sorrow or memory awakened the young man’s curiosity, who resolved to inquire why a woman who made a profession of joviality took the liberty of showing sad feelings, a luxury reserved solely for respectable women, mistresses and queens of their spirit and heart.

He solicited a confidence, and no doubt the woman was in one of those moments when expansion is needed, and one tells the first comer what can most deeply affect us, for without difficulties or prudery she replied, passing her hands over her eyes:

“It always moves me to see a bottle of champagne opened, because that wine cost me very dear... on my wedding day.”

“Why, were you ever married... before a priest?—asked Raimundo with playful insolence.”

—Would to heaven I had not been—she replied with the accent of truth, with impetuous frankness—. Through having married I am in the state you see me.

“Come, is your husband some spendthrift, some scamp?”

“Nothing of the kind. He manages what he has very well, and possesses thousands of duros... thousands, yes, or hundreds of thousands.”

“Girl, what a lot of duros! In that case... did he lead you an evil life? Did he have intrigues? Did he beat you?”

“He neither led me an evil life, nor beat me, nor had intrigues, so far as I know... Afterwards I have indeed been beaten! The fact is that he lacked time to give me either an evil life or a good one, for we were together, once married, a couple of hours and no more.”

“Ah!—murmured Valdés, scenting an interesting adventure.”

“You shall hear what happened, my dear. My parents were very respectable people, but without a penny. Papa had a petty post, and on his pinched salary they managed. My mother died; my father lost his place... and as he could not feed my brother and me, and was rather handsome, he let himself be cajoled by a wealthy mature dame, and married her as his second wife. At first my stepmother behaved... well, decently: she did not look upon us stepchildren with an evil eye. But as I grew up and became a woman, and men took to saying things to me in the street, I understood that they were taking a dislike to me at home. Everything I did was ill done, and I always had behind me the judge and the constable... my stepmother. My father grew very pensive, and I understood that it cut him to the heart to see me ill-treated. And what resulted from these squabbles was that they set about finding me a husband to get rid of me. By chance they found one soon, a well-to-do individual of forty, steady, respectable, sober... In short, my father himself was satisfied and agreed that it was an excellent match that offered itself to me. And so they in confidence negotiated and arranged the marriage, and one day, when I least expected it... marry! and no answering back.”

“And what effect did the news have upon you? A bad one, eh?”

“Very bad... because I had the foolishness to be in love to the very marrow of my bones, as a young girl falls in love, but a girl with a woman’s feelings... with an infantry officer, a lieutenant poor as church mice... and it had got into my head that he was to be my husband as soon as he became captain. My father’s entreaties, my friends’ advice, the orders and even the cuffs of my stepmother—who gave me no peace—bewildered me to such a degree that I dared not resist. And let the presents come, and unpack the boxes of dresses sent from Madrid, and put on the white flounces, and pin on the silly orange-blossom wreath, and off to church, and there goes the blessing, and immediately a great feast, the family friends and the bridegroom’s relations proposing toasts and making my head like a drum, when I had more wish to weep than to taste a morsel...”

“My girl, so far I find nothing very extraordinary in your story. Marrying like that, fuming and like an automaton, is common enough.”

—Wait, wait—she warned, threatening me with her hand—. Now comes the ridiculous part, the turning point... Well, sir, in my life I had never tasted that Champagne... They served me the first glass so that I might respond to the toasts, and after emptying it I fancied I felt more courage, that my discomfort and dark sadness were relieved. I drank the second, and the good effect increased. Joy poured through my body... Then I slipped into taking three, four, five, perhaps half a dozen...

The guests jested, celebrating the sport of my drinking so, and I drank seeking in the sort of vertigo caused by champagne a complete oblivion of what was to happen and of what was already happening to me. Nevertheless, I checked myself before becoming completely disordered, and at table they could only notice that I was laughing very loud, that my eyes were glistening, and that I was exceedingly flushed.

A carriage was waiting for my husband and me, a carriage that was to take us to a country house of his to spend the first week after the wedding.—My friend, I know not whether it was the motion of the carriage or the open air, or simply that I was tipsy,—but the truth is that no sooner did I find myself alone with that man and he attempted to pay me affectionate caresses, than my tongue was loosed, my blood boiled, and I told him from A to Z all about the lieutenant, and that I loved only the lieutenant, and lieutenant this and lieutenant that, and going on about their having married me against my will, and that I would get even and beat him to death... Outrageous things, the kind wine inspires in those unaccustomed to it... And my husband, paler than a corpse, ordered the carriage to turn back, and instantly returned me to my house.—That is to say, they told me this afterwards, because I, from pure drunkenness... knew nothing of it.

“And did your husband never receive you back again?”

“Never again. It seems I blurted out tremendous atrocities to him. You see; it was the cursed sparkling wine that spoke through my mouth...”

“And... at home? Did they receive you gladly?”

“Hardly! My stepmother insulted me horribly, and my father wept in corners... I preferred to take to the door, by Jove!”

“And... the lieutenant?”

“Yes, go look for the lieutenant! On hearing of my wedding he had taken another sweetheart, and married her shortly after.”

“You know you have had bad luck?”

“Bad indeed... But I believe that if all women spoke what they think, as I did through the fault of the champagne, more than four and more than eight would find themselves worse off than this individual.”

“And does your husband not give you an allowance? The law obliges him.”

“Bah! A little lawyer I had already warned me of that... The devil go to law! Am I going to ask that man to maintain me after the disillusionment I cost him? Come, pour me more champagne... Now I can drink whatever I like. No secret will escape me.”

Sister Apparition

In the convent of the Poor Clares of S——, through the double low grating, I saw a nun prostrate in adoration. She was facing the high altar, but had her face pressed against the pavement, her arms outstretched in a cross, and maintained absolute immobility. She seemed no more alive than the recumbent figures of a queen and an infanta whose alabaster mausoleums adorned the choir. Suddenly the prostrate nun raised herself, no doubt to breathe, and I was able to distinguish her features. One could see that she must have been very beautiful in her youth, as one knows that ruined ramparts were once splendid palaces. The nun might count eighty years as easily as ninety: her face, of a sepulchral yellowness, her trembling head, her wasted mouth, her white eyebrows, revealed that highest degree of senility in which the passage of time is no longer perceptible.

The singular feature of that spectral face, which already belonged to the other world, was the eyes. Defying age, they preserved, by a rare exception, their fire, their intense blackness, and a violent, passionate, dramatic expression. The gaze of such eyes could never be forgotten. Such volcanic eyes would be inexplicable in a nun who had entered the cloister offering God an innocent heart; they betrayed a stormy past; they gave off the sinister light of some terrible memory. I felt an ardent curiosity, without hoping that chance would provide me with someone acquainted with the nun’s secret.

Chance served me to the measure of my desire. That very evening, at the ordinary of the inn, I struck up a conversation with an elderly gentleman, very communicative and more than moderately discerning, one of those who delight in enlightening a stranger. Flattered by my interest, he opened wide to me the archives of his fortunate memory. No sooner did I mention the convent of the Clares and indicate the special impression made upon me by the nun’s gaze, than my guide exclaimed:

“Ah! Sister Apparition! Indeed, indeed... She has an indefinable something in her eyes... Her history is written there. As you see her, the two furrows on her cheeks, which at close quarters look like channels, have been worn by tears. Weeping for more than forty years! Plenty of salt water has flowed in so many days... The fact is that the water has not quenched the burning coals of her gaze... Poor Sister Apparition! I can reveal to you the riddle of her life better than anyone, because my father knew her when she was a girl, and I even believe he paid court to her a little... She was such a divinity!”